Proposals
are sought for an interdisciplinary, edited collection focused on the work and
career of Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.

Lightfoot’s career spans more than six decades, beginning with his emergence in the folk rock scene in Toronto’s Yorkville in the 1960s through to continued touring in the present decade. Lightfoot’s success has bridged a number of genres, including folk, pop, country, rock and a range of crossovers. A string of Top 40 hits in the 1970s cemented Lightfoot’s international reputation, both as a singer and songwriter. In addition to his own recordings, Lightfoot’s songs have also been recorded and performed by an amazing array of diverse artists., across a vast range of musical genres.

The conference will take place from Feb. 13th to 15th at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.

We are looking for papers that transgress the boundaries between our notions of music and space. We are explicitly following Henri Lefèbvre’s (1991) concept of a dialectics of triplicity and Edward Soja’s (2008) trialectic of spatiality. A first level encompasses material, physical, and social spaces of music and the mutuality of sound–music and space–architecture from historical, social, economic and cultural perspectives. A second level focusses on the mutuality of music and symbolic aspects of space such as images, brands, and imaginaries. While the third level should open up an arena of powerful mediations between music–sound and spatial politics, whether this results in the appropriation of the city by music or the appropriation of music by the city.

As part of its Hungarian event series, MusicaFemina International is organizing a symposium and workshop in Budapest on 8-9 January 2020. The initiative, involving Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Germany, is primarily aimed at creating the conditions for more balanced relations of gender in the various spheres and institutions of music production.

The interdisciplinary conference seeks to intensify the scientific discourse on the current sounds of popular music, and about those who stream, buy, talk about, like, use, and listen to them. The goal is to bring together different approaches unified by the interest in the cultural meanings, identities, experiences, and values that music without a clear subcultural context is being loaded with.

We
are pleased to announce the launch of the Songwriting Studies Journal,
an initiative that emerges from the AHRC-funded Songwriting Studies Research
Network based at Birmingham City University and the University of Liverpool.
Since launching our series of national research events we’ve become
increasingly aware of the diversity of scholarly work that intersects with
songwriting. The network now seeks contributions from scholars for an inaugural
issue of the journal that will help define the emerging interdisciplinary field
of songwriting studies.

The
Journal of Film Music is planning a special issue devoted to the topic “From Jukebox to
Score to Jukebox” which will explore the relationship between jukebox
music as source music (diegetic music) and film scoring (non-diegetic music)
and how movie themes ended up being played on real jukeboxes in popular
arrangements.

Our special issue tackles a well-known but
little-studied phenomenon: the importance of Holocaust themes to the metal
scene. The Holocaust has often featured as a subject of metal lyrics (from
Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’ on). It has repeatedly been referred to in
descriptions of metal’s sound (e.g. the ‘Heavy Metal Holocaust’ of 1981). And
it has formed part of accusations and warnings against bands who flirt with and
sometimes outright endorse far-right and neo-Nazi politics.

Even with those bands – the vast majority on
the scene – who do not engage in such politics, their interest in the Holocaust
has frequently been seen as exploitative at best. But many metal lyricists and
musicians claim that they are providing a ‘history lesson’, and many teenagers’
first acquaintance with such figures as Josef Mengele and Reinhard Heydrich
surely comes from Slayer.

It is high
time, therefore, that the tangled relationship of metal and the Holocaust be
unpicked and examined. We wish to face up to a difficult and troubling topic,
and accept that many of the ways that metal has approached it are not beyond
critique. But we are also interested in possibilities that come from its
incorporation and embodiment of the Holocaust. What aspects of metal’s politics
need to be thought through, attended to, challenged? Can metal form a kind of
historiography? Metal frequently evokes extreme affects. Does this focus
provide a means of testifying to the Shoah that goes beyond the simply
propositional or representational? Are such modes of remembrance exportable
beyond the bounds of the metal scene, or do they only work within the
particular codes and values of this subculture? How do they compare to other
forms of ‘Holocaust impiety’ and other forms of representation?

We seek proposals for articles of 6,000-8,000
words. Final deadline for articles will be 1 December 2019.

Questions could include but are not limited to
the following:

What
part has metal played in transmitting knowledge of or interest in the
Holocaust?

What
place does this particular subject have within the subculture? Is it one of
many horrors that its fans wish to face up to, or does it have a particular
significance for them?

Can
metal provide history lessons?

How
has the understanding and presentation of the Holocaust by metal bands and fans
been influenced by:

politics
(including those of the far right)?

religious
and anti-religious positions?

interest
in Nordic and Germanic culture and themes?

Does
metal offer ways of approaching the Holocaust from which other cultural forms
can learn, e.g.

its
tendency to avoid moralising?

its
concentration on intense feelings rather than contemplation?

How
has the significant history of Jewish involvement in metal culture impacted the
scene’s responses to the Holocaust?

How
have Israeli metal scenes engaged with the Holocaust?

Is
the approach taken by these forms of music best characterised as ‘holocaust
impiety’?

Is
it possible to be ‘reflexively anti-reflexive’ about the Holocaust?

The Fifth Symposium took institutionalisation as its theme in order to contribute to and clarify the ways in which they exert power, the relationships between then, and the hierarchies they establish. In the final plenary session, delegates debated a range of topics that might be given further consideration in the next symposium. The discussion largely focussed on two areas of interest – heritage andnetworks – and both were considered important current areas of work with which the next symposium could engage. It has been decided that the sixth symposium should concentrate on networks and music, while the seventh would focus on questions of heritage.Continue reading →

All across the Soviet Union, from Belarus to Central Asia, from Moscow to Georgia, the VIA phenomenon (Vokal’no–instrumental’nyi ansambl’) played a central role in Soviet popular music and culture. The label VIA applied to acts which were quite distinct from other musical genres and subcultures (bards, punk, rock and jazz) and was invented by the Soviet authorities in the early 1960s in order to counter the growing influence of Western pop music in the empire. From this date onwards until the end of the Soviet Union, a number of well-known popular musicians entered the scene and made a lasting impression on the Soviet and post-Soviet collective memory. Bands like Ariėl’, Pesniary, Gunesh, Vesëlye rebiata, Orėra, Siabry, Zemliane and Golubye Gitary blended different musical styles and genres like pop, beat, rock, jazz, synth-pop, progressive rock and electronic music; with catchy melodies, a good dose of experimentalism and a solid technique, and managed to gain popularity while maintaining high production and recording standards.Continue reading →